M&S Chaos: Leading British Retail Chain Attacked

Leading British retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has apologised to customers after a cyber incident has affected contactless payments and the pick up of online orders in it stores in recent days. M&S shoppers are facing further frustration at the checkout as the company struggles to recover from a cyber attack. 

Customers began reporting problems on the weekend, with the retailer confirming on Tuesday 22nd April that it had suffered a damaging cyber attack. 

The incident began on Monday 21st April with contactless payments and click and collect orders affected in stores across the country. However, earlier there was a separate technical problem on Saturday 19th, which only affected contactless payments.

M&S has been forced to take some systems offline as part of its management of the attack. In many stores it was cash only as the payments system was down. M&S says it had made the "decision to move some of our processes offline to protect our colleagues, partners, suppliers and our business". Stores remain open and customers could "continue to shop on our website and our app", the statement added.

However, there is still confusion on social media amongst M&S customers and the firm has responded to some posts on X in the past few hours advising customers that contactless payments can be taken in stores.

In expert comment, Jamie Moles, Senior Technical Manager at ExtraHop said “While we don't yet have the full details of the M&S cyber incident, the company's dedication to protecting the network highlights the critical importance of a modern network security strategy. Incidents like this demonstrate how essential it is to have real-time visibility, threat detection and rapid response capabilities across all digital infrastructure...

Network visibility can play a pivotal role, helping organisations detect anomalies early, isolate potential threats and maintain service continuity." Moles said 

M&S said it had reported the incident to the National Cyber Security Centre and hired cyber security experts to help investigate and manage the issue and was “taking actions to further protect our network” to ensure it could continue serving shoppers. 

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Image: @marksandspencer

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